


Training

by vakarian_shepard



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Banter, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:56:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8562916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vakarian_shepard/pseuds/vakarian_shepard
Summary: "If you wish to be trained in the basics of an assassin, I can certainly show you...It shall be fun! I will make it fun, I promise."





	

**Author's Note:**

> have some training shenanigans

“You are so loud,” he scolded. “If you would just take that heavy armor off—”

“I like wearing heavy armor because I don’t get as hurt fighting Hurlocks and Ogres,” she grumbled, propping her hands up on her hips. “I feel safe, or—or something. Why don’t you take _your_ armor off?” Quick as a whip, his smile turned from amused to wicked, and Kira blanched. “No, scratch that. That’s not what I meant.”

“You are perfectly safe with me, my dear Warden, this I assure you,” he said softly, voice as smooth as honey, eyes twinkling at her somehow in the late afternoon sun. 

“I want you to think about who you are for a second and what you just said to me,” she said, trying to sound serious and failing as she chuckled quietly. “Seriously, though, can’t you just teach me to be quiet?” 

He stepped closer, watching amusedly as she leaned back a bit, anticipating an attack that wouldn’t come. She wasn’t sure why this was such a big deal, why she didn’t want to take the armor off to train with him—it wasn’t like she hadn’t fought with Nadia the other day in nothing but a sleeveless shirt and tights (and, subsequently, spent the next day and a half trying to warm back up without standing directly in the campfire). Maybe it was the fact that he had still been hired to kill them, and he could very well be lying about his oath. Or maybe, whispered a voice in the back of her mind, maybe it was that flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach every time she looked at him or talked to him that had her wanting to cover up. 

After all, there hadn’t been a single person in her past that had ever liked the way she looked.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she flinched again and looked away with a huff. “Alright, fine. Don’t—don’t _watch_.”

Zevran laughed, full and warm, and her face felt a little hot at the sound. “Of course,” he said with a nod and a wink before he turned on his heel to face the trees on the other side of the little clearing.

She felt odd, as she undid the buckles and ties on her armor. She’d undressed at camp before, behind nothing more than a sheet of cloth, but this was a little more—intimate. It’s weird, and she tried not to think past that as she finally shimmied out of her armor completely and was left standing in the shirt and tights she wore under it. Feeling more self-conscious than she had in a long, long time, she cleared her throat anxiously and said, “Okay, you’re good now.”

He turned and his face lit up. “Ah, see? Doesn’t that feel better?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “’S a little cold, actually.”

Zevran laughed again, nodding as he said, “More than a little, I’d wager. But, I know how you feel. Remember when you threw all of my warmth balm into the lake?”

She snorted. “And threw a pair of pants at your head?”

“That was not the first time a beautiful woman has yelled at me to put on pants,” he chuckled, “but it was the first time that I was already fully clothed.”

Smiling, Kira shook her head and said, “Your definition of fully clothed is vastly different from mine.” 

He hummed in agreement quietly, and they stood for a moment, just grinning at each other. The silence wasn’t comfortable for long, though, and she had to break eye contact after another minute, looking away to scan the tree line. There weren’t any darkspawn around, so the worst she had to worry about was bandits—which was unlikely. Still, she felt wrong without her armor, even if Zevran had already done a remarkable job of making her feel at ease, at least a little. 

“Can we start, or…?” she asked quietly, shifting her weight anxiously.

“If I try to show you anything while you are wound so tight, you will probably pull something.” When she just frowned, he grinned and said, “You need to relax. You will never be able to move quietly enough otherwise.”

“Well, what am I even going to do? Are we going to play hide and seek? I don’t—”

“ _That_ is an _excellent_ idea!”

She blinked, looking up at his excited face and feeling her cheeks flood with warmth all over again. “Huh?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll close my eyes and count to 20 and you hide. I’ll take a stroll through the forest, and you try to ‘kill me’ with this practice dagger,” he explained, handing her something that she hadn’t seen him grab. “If I catch you first, we start over. Or, perhaps I will make you do pushups.”

There was a pregnant pause as she processed what he said, eyes on the object in her hand. Taking a deep breath, she said, “One—this is a twig. Two— _pushups_? Really? Am I twelve?”

He chuckled. “We will not be using real knives until I am sure you can do these exercises without accidentally slitting my throat. And you should be glad that I offer pushups as a punishment, because if I were training you like a real Crow, such a meager punishment would be more of a reward.”

She didn’t like the sound of that, and her mind flashed back to the Sloth demon and his dream where he was being tortured by his fellow Crows—stretched on the rack and forced not to make a sound. That couldn’t have been the worst thing they did to him, judging by the scars he had dusting his skin—cuts everywhere and one burn mark that she knew of. He’d said most of them were from jobs, but…

“One!” he called, clapping his hand over his eyes and grinning. “Two!”

Kira felt about ten years old as she fought back the urge to giggle, darting into the trees, stepping on the fallen leaves as she went and avoiding the mud puddles. She knew at least enough to avoid leaving a path. She didn’t know how far to go, so she only went far enough away that she could still see him. She felt a little silly, creeping along from tree to tree after he finished counting, watching, waiting for her moment to strike. It was harder than she thought, even as he clasped his hands behind his back and hummed to himself. There were just too many ways he would hear her if she were to try a surprise attack.

He turned a corner around a large oak and Kira paused, waiting for him to reemerge on the other side to continue the hunt. A few minutes ticked by, and she frowned. Where could he have—

She jumped something awful when an arm wrapped around her neck, something sharp—another twig, she realized—pressing into her throat. He chuckled in her ear, other hand resting on her waist as she slumped against him with a groan of defeat, leaning her head back against his shoulder. 

“Too slow,” he murmured. “You were also much too focused—you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times.”

Kira sighed heavily as he dropped his hand away from her neck, bringing it to rest on her waist as well. “Why are we even doing this? I thought you said assassins preferred poison.”

His hands began to wander, his breath hot on her skin as he asked, “Does the thrill of the hunt do nothing for you, my Grey Warden?”

“Well, I— _yEEP!”_

A peal of laughter was pulled from her throat as his hands dipped a little too low on her hips. She bent at the waist, wriggling, trying to get away from him as he instinctively held tighter. She laughed louder, then, voice cracking as she twisted away from his grasp with a string of high-pitched, “ _No, no, no,_ ”s. When he finally let go, she stumbled forward and grabbed onto the nearest tree, leaning back against it and covering her mouth with one hand, embarrassed by the pitch of the sounds she was making. They made eye contact for a moment, before she brought her other hand up and covered her face completely.

“Don’t look at me,” she laughed, ears burning.

“Are you ticklish?” he asked, and she could hear his grin in his voice.

“Apparently.”

He laughed. “You didn’t know?”

“I—the last time someone tried tickling me, I sort of almost broke their nose,” she sighed, peeking through her fingers to find him smiling at her with a sort of… _soft_ expression on his face.

“You are adorable.”

“ _Noooo_ ,” she mumbled, giggling and burying her face in her hands again. “I’m a Grey Warden! We’re not supposed to be cute—we’re supposed to be fearsome.”

“Fearsomely cute,” he replied simply, chuckling as she shook her head.

“I’m going to explode from embarrassment if you don’t stop,” she warned weakly.

“Hmm, as you wish. As it were, I caught you before you caught me, so we’re starting over,” he began. “I won’t make you do pushups this time, but next time…”

 

* * *

 

Kira bit back a scream as he caught her _again_ , for the twelfth time in a row, pinning her hands above her against a tree. The sun was well on its way to bed by this point, and there was no way she’d be able to beat his stupid elven eyes in the dark, but she was beyond frustrated at this point. She must have done a hundred pushups at this point, and she could already feel the soreness setting in. Great.

“It’s not as though I’m going to be actually accepting contracts or anything,” she was saying, trying to distract herself from how very close he was. “If I know I can overpower someone, what’s the point of all this sneaking around?”

“Spoken like a warrior,” he quipped, raising an eyebrow. “Are you certain you are a rogue?”

“What’s that, Mr. I-Couldn’t-Pick-A-Lock-If-It-Was-Already-Unlocked? I’m not rogue enough for you?”

Narrowing his eyes, he pressed his lips together, unimpressed. “You asked me to teach you, did you not? You do want to learn, yes?”

“I’m obviously not smart enough for this,” she huffed, twisting her wrists in his (surprisingly quite firm) grasp. “Are you going to let me go so I can lose one more time before we go back to camp, or is this the part where you decide I’m hopeless?”

The light from the sunset had his eyes glinting gold as he considered her, and it was beautiful, which only made her angrier. How dare he be so damn perfect? Who gave him the _right_? When he still did nothing, she glared. “Well?”

“Make me,” was all he said.

She blinked and, “ _What_?”

“Surely you can break my grip on your own,” Zevran replied, shrugging. Leaning in a little closer, he grinned and repeated, “ _Make me_.”

She pulled experimentally at his grasp again, frowning when he just tightened his grip and smiled down at her. She knew at least ten different ways to actually make him let go, but all of them were fairly painful and, well…

Fuck it.

Grinding the heel of her boot into the top of his foot—did absolutely nothing. He winced, but otherwise didn’t move. _Of course_ , she thought _, the man has been tortured since he was a child. Of course that doesn’t work._

Taking a tiny breath, she smiled tightly as she brought her knee up between his legs as hard as she could.

_That_ worked.

He grunted, wheezing as he dropped her hands and curled in on himself, stumbling backwards. She didn’t do anything else, just crossed her arms and watched him try not to collapse to his knees. Bracing his hands on his knees and squinting up at her, he groaned, “Good one.”

“You gonna be alright, tough guy?” 

“I didn’t— _ngh_ —really want to father children someday anyway,” he replied, voice tight.

Laughing softly, she began to say, “Sorry,” only to have him lunge for her. Instincts taking over just barely in the knick of time, she managed to avoid getting trapped in the circle of his arms, feinting to the side and nearly falling as she tripped over an exposed root. He regained his footing quicker than she did, catching her around the shoulders as she turned to run and reeling her in. He laughed, ready to make some sort of joke about how very often they ended up like this no doubt, but she wasn’t having any of that.

Tightening her grip on his arms, she bent at the waist and pulled, sending him tumbling over her shoulder and onto the ground in front of her. He groaned again, but she wasn’t done. Straddling his midsection, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pressed her twig-knife to his throat with a snarl.

There was a faint expression of shock on his face for a split second, before he grinned and said, “Well done!”

Raising an eyebrow, she let go of his hair and braced both hands on either side of his head. “ _Well done_? What’d you go and attack me for?”

“You were getting frustrated and I thought you needed to hit something,” he shrugged.

“You’re _so_ —I didn’t want to hit _you_ ,” she argued, slapping gently at his shoulder as she straightened her back so she was sitting on his stomach.

He just laughed, pushing himself up on his elbows and smiling up at her sweetly. “No?”

“ _No_.”

“And why not? I have been told I am perfectly hittable many times before.”

Kira laughed, shaking her head as she moved off of him to sit beside him on the cold, slightly damp ground. “I don’t _like_ hitting you, you know,” she informed him as he sat up.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, _oh_.” With a sigh, she pushed herself onto her feet, offering him her hands and wiggling her fingers invitingly. “Come on. Let’s call it a day. My nose is starting to go numb.”

**Author's Note:**

> edit: i forgot i randomly switched tenses in the middle for like a paragraph for no damn reason
> 
> dont read fic in different tenses and write at the same time children


End file.
